Working Wounded: Amazing E-mails

Jan. 6, 2005 — -- DEAR READERS: As I enter my 10th year writing Working Wounded, I've responded personally to more than 50,000 e-mails from readers. I thought it would be fun to celebrate this milestone by publishing my favorite e-mails to my column. For reasons that are obvious, here are some of the best, and worst:

"I was asked in a job interview if I had kids. I thought about answering 'four,' because I really needed the job. Then I thought about answering 'No, that's an illegal question' and probably falling off their shortlist. I asked, 'Do you need kids to do this job?' The interviewer quickly moved on to his next question."

"I had a boss who was a total micromanager. He drove everyone crazy. One day I came up with a strategy; I sent him every e-mail that I received and asked him for his advice. After two days, I started e-mailing him asking for direction on e-mails I'd sent him days earlier. That afternoon he gave me a lecture on the importance of making your own decisions. He's left me alone ever since."

"I was in a job interview and they asked, 'What are your weaknesses at work?' I responded, 'I anticipated that you'd ask this question. So I asked my 9-year-old daughter to tell me what my weaknesses are. She replied, 'chocolate milkshakes.' Everyone in the room laughed, and I never had to actually answer the question."

"Last year at the Christmas party, the boss gave us all Christmas cards. We opened them up only to find pink slips inside. He said he thought the party atmosphere would take the edge off of being let go."

"Trying to cut down on costs, my boss had a few of us in the office doing the mass mailings instead of paying a company to send them out for us. He didn't realize that the amount of money he was paying out in hourly wages to have all of us pulled off our regular jobs to do this far exceeded the amount he was trying to save. He said when we were done, 'I sure am glad that I'm not paying for this!'"

"The worst boss I ever saw actually asked his assistant to type her own termination letter."

"I once had an office mate who drove me crazy. He muttered to himself all the time and constantly interrupted me when I was busy or on the phone. I complained to my supervisor numerous times, but she never agreed to move him, so finally I decided to take the matter into my own hands. We worked in an old 1940s era factory building, and this person's desk was directly under a huge ceiling fan dating from the original building. One morning, before he came in, I left an old oily machine nut on his desk. During the day I caught him occasionally glancing up at the fan. The next morning I dropped a rusty bolt on his desk. The next day I left another nut and a screw. That afternoon he went to our supervisor and asked to be moved."

What is your favorite Working Wounded story? I'll give an autographed copy of "Working Wounded: Advice that adds insight to injury" (Warner, 2000) to the best submission. Send your entry, name & address via: http://workingwounded.com or via e-mail: bob@workingwounded.com. Entries must be received by Wednesday, Jan. 11.

Here are the results from a recent workingwounded.com/ABCNews.com online ballot:

Our winning strategy for recognizing employees comes from E.F. in cyberspace:

"Your article hit home with us as we work today. The company has declared today a holiday but half of my staff came in today and the rest are on call. You may call that unusual for an insurance company, but we do have dedicated employees. We recognize people in several of the ways outlined in your article. We do one extra item: We take them to lunch or dinner. For a special treat, I will take people to lunch, nothing fancy. We spend an hour together with a meal and can exchange work ideas or just talk about the life after work. Sometimes I take people to lunch if we have had a very hard week. You have no idea how pleased people are that you gave them your time and bought them a meal. Once a year, we have a dinner (and that is fancy) and recognize all the contributions of the entire department."

Bob Rosner is a best-selling author, speaker and internationally syndicated columnist. His newest best-seller, "Gray Matters: The Workplace Survival Guide" (Wiley, 2004), is a business comic book that trades cynicism for solutions. Ask Bob a question: bob@workingwounded.com or http://graymattersbook.com.

This work is the opinion of the columnist and in no way reflects the opinion of ABC News.